The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WHAT IS BOSTOCK V. CLAYTON COUNTY, GA.?
One of a trio of LGBTQ workplace discrimination cases that the Supreme Court heard in October. Doraville’s Gerald Bostock is the former coordinator of Clayton County’s Court Appointed Special Advocate program. He alleges he was fired because he is gay. The county said Bostock’s sexual orientation was not a factor and that program funding was misspent under his watch.
What was argued?
Whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when it banned sex discrimination in the workplace, by extension prohibited bias against LGBTQ people due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Attorneys for Bostock and other plaintiffs argued that bias against gay people is akin to gender stereotyping, which the Supreme Court ruled was illegal in 1989. Employers biased against gay employees, they said, are relying on stereotypes that all men should be interested in women and vice versa.
The Trump administration, which argued for the defense, said sex and sexual orientation are two separate things, the latter of which Congress almost certainly did not have in mind when it wrote the Civil Rights Act in 1964. The courts don’t have the authority to legislate new laws, Trump’s solicitor general said — only Congress does.
What did the Supreme Court decide?
On June 15, the justices in a 6-3 ruling sided with Bostock and the other plaintiffs.
“The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,”Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote for the majority.“Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”